My wife pointed out a new car wash the other day.

Not the self-serve kind where that pink soap stuff foams out of a brush and you spray it off yourself.

This was one of those that pulls your car onto a track.

You sit there.

It does everything for you while you answer a text message or something.

A few minutes later, you drive away with a clean car.

It’s faster. Easier. Way more convenient.

And it got me thinking.

We’ve done this with almost everything.

We don’t wash clothes by hand...thank God.
We don’t go into banks unless we have to.
We don’t stand in line to pay bills.
We can order groceries from the couch.
We can have dinner brought to our front door.

And when was the last time anyone got up to change the TV channel? I’m not even sure our TVs have that function.

Over the last century, we’ve engineered an incredible amount of friction out of everyday life.

Things that once took hours now take minutes.

Things that took minutes now take seconds.

Which means we should have more time.

But it doesn’t really feel like we do.

At least not in the ways that matter.

There’s some evidence that fathers are spending more time with their young children than previous generations did.

But we’re also spending less time with friends.

Less time with extended family.

And it’s hard to look around and conclude that everyone used all this newfound efficiency to become remarkably well-rested.

So where did the time go?

I think part of the answer is pretty simple.

We filled it.

But there’s another part we don't talk about as much.

We changed what we expect to fit into a day.

The washing machine didn’t eventually give us three extra hours to sit on the porch.

It just became normal to have clean clothes without spending three hours washing them.

Email made communication almost instantaneous, but somehow that didn’t result in shorter workdays. It meant we could send and receive a lot more messages.

Cars let us travel farther in less time, so we started living farther from work, shopping farther from home, and driving our kids farther for activities.

Every time we removed some friction, life seemed to expand to fill the space.

The convenience was real.

So was the time we saved.

We just kept finding new things to do with it.

And now we've reached a strange point where we have conveniences our grandparents couldn't have imagined while still regularly saying:

I just don't have enough time.

Maybe that's because saved time isn't the same as free time.

And free time isn't necessarily used time.

If you don't decide where it goes, it doesn't sit there waiting for you.

It gets filled.

Quietly. Automatically.

Another email.
Another errand.
Another episode.

Another 20 minutes scrolling through something you won't remember tomorrow.

Another thing that feels urgent mostly because there's enough room to squeeze it in.

None of this is an argument for going backward.

You can have my dishwasher when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

And hand-washing your car isn't inherently more meaningful than driving it through the automatic one.

But those slower tasks did contain something we've become remarkably good at eliminating.

Empty space.

You washed the car for 45 minutes.

You drove somewhere without a podcast playing.

You stood in line without a phone in your hand.

You waited for someone without having anything else to do.

Not every one of those moments was profound.

Most probably weren't.

But they created little stretches of life where nothing else was competing for your attention.

Sometimes you thought.

Sometimes you talked to the person beside you.

Sometimes you noticed what was happening around you.

Most of the time you were just bored.

We've spent decades getting those moments back.

Then we immediately filled them.

Which makes me wonder if we’ve been asking the wrong question.

We keep asking how we can save more time.

How can I make this faster?

How can I make this easier?

How can I squeeze a few more minutes out of my day?

But we've gotten remarkably good at that already.

Maybe the harder question is what happens to those minutes once we get them.

Because saving 20 minutes doesn't mean much if I immediately hand those 20 minutes to something I don't particularly care about.

The car wash isn't the problem.

The washing machine isn't the problem.

The phone isn't even the problem.

The problem is assuming that making life more efficient will somehow make it more meaningful.

Efficiency can give us the time.

It can't tell us what deserves it.

Until next time—
keep the fires burning.
– Clay

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